In fact, Adiwal has never done school presentations with the VPD, Const. Brian Montague told The Vancouver Sun.

Justice William Grist sentenced Adiwal to four months in jail on May 7 for a 2011 assault of a man who had a dispute with Adiwal’s associate Preetpal Sangha. Sangha also received four months for uttering death threats to the victim.

Grist accepted submissions from defence lawyer Rob Dhanu that Adiwal had turned his life around after his May 2011 arrest in Chilliwack — in part because of the near fatal shooing of his twin Peter in 2009.

Dhanu told The Sun he thinks the judge misunderstood his April 25 submissions and that Adiwal had in fact spoken to a Burnaby Grade 12 law class with someone from probation services — not police — on April 23, two days before the sentencing hearing.

“The confusion may arise from the fact that Mike was also approached by members of gang squad to possibly liaise on a one-to-one basis with at-risk youth. He hasn’t had the opportunity to follow through with this yet,” Dhanu said in an email.

The Sun obtained a copy of the sentencing hearing transcript in which Dhanu referred to Adiwal’s law class presentation “talking about his life, talking about the consequences that he’s had to face in his life because of some of the poor decisions that he’s made, in the hopes that he can now have some impact on the youth of tomorrow.”

According to the transcript, Dhanu told Grist that a Vancouver gang squad cop talked to Adiwal about “his potential to engage one-on-one with Indo-Canadian youth who are at risk of falling into that same cycle of negative peer associations, which leads to much of what we read about in the media, on an ongoing basis.”

“This is the type of person that we want in our community, giving back,” Dhanu said in court.

But the gang cop identified by Dhanu during the sentencing hearing has no recollection of ever talking to Adiwal about working with at-risk kids, Const. Montague told The Sun.

He said the officer “has obviously had dealings with Mike, but cannot even recall a casual chat about this.”

Dhanu said Monday his client told him about the chat with the VPD officer on the morning of the sentencing hearing and that he had no chance to follow up.

Adiwal’s latest conviction stemmed from a May 9, 2011, incident at a Chilliwack sawmill where he struck the victim, a businessman who owned the mill with Sangha’s father and others.

Crown Brian Fell laid out the circumstances of the assault at the sentencing hearing. “Mr. Adiwal took the lead in the physical activity. He punched and slapped the victim around the head area. During this the victim lost his glasses, which he never recovered. During this time Mr. Adiwal was saying to him ‘Do you know who I am?’ ” Fell told Grist.

The victim went to the RCMP afterwards alleging Sangha was extorting and threatening him. Police began an undercover investigation, which culminated in the arrest of Adiwal and Sangha near a place where the victim had been told to meet to hand over $10,000.

Both accused pleaded guilty last fall to a single count each. Grist heard sentencing submissions from Dhanu and Fell in April, then gave his reasons orally May 7, with the written ruling only being released May 27.

Other more serious charges were stayed.

Adiwal and his twin, 35, have been well known in the Metro Vancouver gang scene for years. They were among the subjects of a major undercover investigation in 2002-03 designed to collect evidence in a series of unsolved slayings.

The probe ended prematurely when police overheard the cries and moans of a man inside Adiwal’s apartment in February 2003 and broke down the door, exposing the undercover operation to the suspects.

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